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Downloading and listening to podcast episodes

This page describes how to download podcast episodes and listen to them once downloaded.

Downloading podcast episodes

As you may know by now, SpeakOn can play podcast files directly streamed from their remote location - this may satisfy many users' needs. So why might you want to download podcast episodes to your computer?

Downloaded episodes are stored as audio files on your computer which means that you can keep them forever, and listen to these files without being connected to the internet. This is useful for example, when you are on the move without internet connection. Also, as these files are simple audio files, you can navigate and skip portions of the files (for example, advertisements that you do not want to listen to) using the usual SpeakOn Player navigation. Sometimes broadband performance is not good and in these situations it is better to download the podcast files first rather than listening to them streamed directly from the internet.

You can download podcast episodes 'on-demand'. SpeakOn has a built-in download manager that downloads files in the background. The Manager has a queue of files waiting to be downloaded and when you select a podcast episode (an audio file) to download, it is added to the queue; a number of files are downloaded simultaneously.

To download a podcast the focus must be on the Player and the Player must be loaded with a podcast feed.

Load the Player with the podcast feed in the usual way (as explained in the previous page) from the Library by either pressing Enter to load and play or Ctrl + Enter to load without playing.

In the Player, move Up and Down to select the podcast episode you want and then either select to download the file from the menu:Download > Episode in focusor press Ctrl + Shift + EnterYou will hear that the file was added to the download queue in the Download Manager.

You can add as many episodes as you like and they are placed in a queue (no more than four are downloaded in parallel).

You can shutdown SpeakOn and start it again and SpeakOn will pick up the download automatically from where you left off (if the server that you download the podcast from supports this feature).

You can find more about the Download Manager and how to monitor, abort and restart your downloadhere

In the Library of SpeakOn, you will find the downloaded files in:Podcast > Received files directory.

The downloaded podcast episodes are placed by default in the following folder:

Note that SpeakOn implements on-demand downloading which means that you first choose which episode to download by either its title or by starting listening to it by streaming. You can add the episode the the download queue with a single keystroke. This way of downloading is useful for podcast feeds where you are interested only in specific episodes.

If you are interested in all the episodes of a particular feed, use a receiver program such as Accessible Podcast Downloader which can remember the episodes you already downloaded and download automatically all new episodes of a feed. You can use SpeakOn to listen to episodes downloaded by these programs by making the files downloaded visible in the SpeakOn Library and this is explained in the next page.

Listening to downloaded podcasts

The podcast episode files are downloaded to the Received Files sub-directory in the Library. You navigate this Library sub-folder and play them as if they were any audio files such as music. Please consultthis page

There are, however, additional features available when listening to podcast files:

If you close SpeakOn when you are in the middle of listening to a podcast, SpeakOn remembers where you left off when you start to listen to it again.

You can make as many bookmarks as you like in your podcasts audio file and this is explainedhere